An open letter to Cedric Phillips, Gerry Thompson, and the Pro Magic community at large

Having listened with great interest to the “Change Worth Fighting For” episode of the Cedric Phillips Podcast, I felt compelled to reply. On that episode, you wondered why professional Magic players have seen their fortunes decline so precipitously over the past ten years, and what they can now do to improve their situation. I believe I can help explain this reversal of fortune, and offer some relevant advice. What follows is a little on the long side, and perhaps a little depressing, but I hope you will nonetheless find it edifying. If you like, it would be my pleasure to discuss these matters further.

About me, briefly: I’ve played Magic on and off since the release of Fallen Empires, and am a regular consumer of Magic content. Among other things, I’ve watched every Pro Tour since PT Los Angeles (October 2005); I’ve watched countless LSV draft videos and Twitch streams; I’ve listened to hundreds of episodes of Limited Resources, Mark Rosewater’s Drive to Work podcast, and various other Magic podcasts; and I’ve read just about every column that Mark Rosewater has ever written. At the same time, I’m also an English Ph.D. and author whose research interests include the economics of fantasy artworks—for instance, my most recent book, I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture, tells the story of how geek culture went from being an underground phenomenon to a mainstream demographic. Given that, I tend to view Magic from a financial perspective—by which I don’t mean living the dream of playing on the Pro Tour, or making a fortune by speculating on Magic cards, but rather trying to understand why Wizards of the Coast makes the economic decisions that it does.

I am hardly a Wizards insider. But I believe that my research into Magic’s financial history, coupled with my broader knowledge of fantasy franchises, enables me to understand why Wizards has chosen over the past decade to disinvest in its Pros, even if that decision appears baffling and counterintuitive to those players. For years now I’ve watched Pros complain about their situation, wondering why, if Magic is doing so great, then why are the Pros suffering? Shouldn’t their fortunes rise and fall with Wizards’? As you yourselves put it on your podcast, “the stars sell the cards,” by which logic if Wizards wants to succeed, then it needs to build stars. Just like how the NBA promotes LeBron James, and not simply “hoops,” Wizards should promote, say, Reid Duke, and not simply “Siege Rhino.” By that same logic, if Wizards doesn’t build stars, then it won’t sell cards, and everyone’s fortune will decline.

I sympathize with your argument. I love watching professional Magic, and once attended a Pro Tour as press just so I could blog about it. But at the same time, I think that your logic is mistaken, and I suspect that your arguments will fail to impress Wizards. Because while it appears to you that Wizards is behaving irrationally, or foolishly, the fact remains that the company long ago settled on a business plan that involves investing less in its Pro players, not more. This is because Wizards has already tried the strategy that you cite—promoting Magic by championing its Pros—only to find that it didn’t work out that all that well. Indeed, it proved nearly catastrophic. And because of that, as well as for other reasons, Wizards has spent the past ten years rebranding Magic as something other than a competitive tournament game.

Magic is a head-to-head battle of wits in which two spellcasting warriors fight to the death with magic and armies of bad-ass creatures. Every card illustration should work in that context: active, aggressive, cool, wicked, “edgy.” The word “magepunk” works for us. Remember, your audience is BOYS 14 and up.

In the Pro Player Era, Magic became a game about winning and dominating, as Wizards targeted competitive young men, selling them dreams of fame and glory, as well as the chance to “play the game, see the world.” The greatest dream was winning the Pro Tour, which Wizards presented not only as the pinnacle of Magic, but as a recruitment pipeline, using it to hire players like Randy Buehler and Aaron Forsythe. Small wonder then that, during this time, Wizards catered heavily to the Pros by creating Magic Online, the Magic Invitational, the Pro Players Club, and the Pro Tour Hall of Fame, and by making the Pro Tour Player Cards, which went inside actual packs.

Wizards also made Magic the way Pros tend to like it: grindy and combo-heavy, chock full of abstract mechanics and cards that skilled players could abuse to gain incremental advantage. For a dozen years, the Pros were Magic’s foremost ambassadors, and the stars did in fact sell the cards.

The problem is that they didn’t sell that many. By catering so heavily to Pros and Pro-wannabes, Wizards steadily alienated its casual players and much of its female fan base. (Scroll, for instance, through these photos, taken at Worlds 2008.) At first, Wizards didn’t know it was losing these customers. On an early episode of his Drive to Work podcast, Mark Rosewater explains that Wizards began calling those disappearing players “the Invisibles,” a shorthand for “people who play who don’t participate in organized play.” Take a moment to let that terminology sink in: during the Pro Player Era, Wizards was so invested in Magic as a competitive game that it didn’t even know that non-competitive players existed, and as such apparently had no good means of tracking their preferences or spending habits. But by 2008, Wizards could no longer deny that its business strategy wasn’t working. Magic was in financial crisis, with sales declining despite the fact that tournament attendance was good and the Pros loved perplexingly complex blocks like Ravnica, Time Spiral, Lorwyn, Shadowmoor, and Alara.

The Pro Player Era came to a rather abrupt end in 2008. That year, Hasbro got a new CEO, Brian Goldner, who appointed a new CEO to Wizards, a man named Greg Leeds. Leeds’ first order of business upon arrival was to clean house, and get Magic back on stable financial footing. Leeds fired several employees (including Randy Buehler), and stripped Wizards back to its core products: Magic and D&D. All other Wizards products—boondoggles like Hecatomb, DreamBlade, and Gleemax—went by the wayside.

Leeds could see that Wizards was spending too much on enfranchised, competitive gamers even as it failed to attract and acquire new players. Part of the problem was that Magic had grown too abstract, too daunting, too mind-meltingly complex for newcomers to grasp. Under Leeds’ direction, Wizards took steps to reverse course. The company partnered with Stainless Games to create the new-player-friendly video game Duels of the Planeswalkers, which launched in June 2009 and proved an immediate success. Wizards also fundamentally changed how Magic was played. Prior to 2008, Magic was primarily a game about mana, in which strategy revolved around players concealing what they were capable of doing on any given turn, which is why control and combo strategies dominated. After 2008, Magic became a game about creature combat, as Wizards nerfed the control and combo strategies that Pros adored, but that infuriated casual players. Wizards also simplified the game’s rules and implemented “New World Order” in an effort to curtail “complexity creep.” Ever since then, Mark Rosewater has cited “complexity” as the greatest threat to Magic’s survival, and Wizards has continued making changes to simplify the game, most recently scaling back the number of new mechanics in each set, and eliminating the block structure. (See Mark Rosewater’s “State of Design” columns for 2016 and 2017.)

The Pros at the time grumbled about the way that Magic was changing, but by and large they accepted what Wizards was doing, reasoning that if and when the game’s fortunes improved, their fortunes would as well—what you, GerryT, called the “trickle-down” theory of Magic. The Pros also accepted that, for the time being at least, sacrifices were needed, so they sucked it up when Wizards reduced its spending on them. The Magic Invitational and the Pro Tour Player Cards disappeared, even as payouts and player perks decreased, as did the number of Pro Tours. The remaining PTs were closed and scaled back, and synced to the latest set releases, no longer taking their names from the cities hosting them. It may not have been obvious at the time, but Wizards was abandoning the concept of “play the game, see the world,” and so it was that in February 2012, Pros attended Pro Tour Dark Ascension, and not the third Pro Tour Honolulu (!). It would seem that, in order to justify its continued existence, the Pro Tour needed to come across less like a vacation for a select few, and more like an ad for the latest set.

But the changes to Magic didn’t stop there. Here it will help to understand how Brian Goldner became CEO of Hasbro, and how he thinks about Magic—how he thinks about all of the company’s top brands. Goldner joined Hasbro in 2000 after working for Haim Saban, the man behind the Power Rangers franchise, and he rose to power by applying Saban’s brand strategy to the Transformers line of toys, transforming it, so to speak, into a massive movie-centric franchise that’s still going strong. (Bumblebee is due out in theaters soon.) Since becoming CEO, Goldner has taken the same approach to a number of Hasbro brands, making movies out of G.I. Joe, Ouija, Battleship, and My Little Pony, and attempting to make films out of Monopoly and Magic. In this way, Goldner has spent the past ten years moving Hasbro away from being a company that acquires licenses to make toys for other brands (such as Star Wars), and more toward becoming an entertainment company that promotes its own brands through movies, TV shows, and other media. (The company recently tried to purchase DreamWorks Animation.)

The way Goldner sees it, consumers aren’t looking to buy toys or Magic cards or physical products per se, but rather emotionally resonant experiences. By this logic, Transformers fans (for example) are looking for all kinds of opportunities to express their love of Transformers, from buying toys and watching movies to putting Autobot emblems on their cars and getting Decepticon tattoos. Or even doing random things like buying bags of shortbread cookies adorned with illustrations of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.

The trick is to give fans limitless opportunities to express their identity as fans, and thereby experience the joy their fandom brings them. In that way, they bond emotionally with the brand, coming to regard it as an essential part of their life.

Goldner transmitted this philosophy to Wizards via Greg Leeds, which is why, post-2008, Wizards became obsessed with creating emotionally resonant experiences for its players. Aaron Forsythe designed Magic 2010 in order to recapture the resonant flavor of Alpha, and Mark Rosewater designed Innistrad in order to make players feel (pleasurably) afraid. Rosewater even reconceived of his job as designing not Magic cards, but emotional experiences for players. As he put it on a 2013 episode of Drive to Work:

The last couple years […] I’ve been making sure that when I make a design, that I have an emotion that I am getting out of you. That I, the game player, am going, ‘What experience am I trying to create?’ And I want to make sure that I’m making gameplay that has that emotional response.

Goldner also encouraged Wizards to create intellectual property for Magic—characters and plot lines that could be exploited across other media. Wizards responded by rebranding Magic around the Planeswalkers, a growing cast of recurring characters that can be represented not only in card form …

… as well as characters in movies and TV shows and theme parks and Broadway musicals and—well, anything Wizards wants, really, including media and products yet to be invented. (Here, other franchises, like Harry Potter, the MCU, Star Wars, and Avatar, have been leading the way for a while, and Wizards is scrambling to catch up.) This ambition is what led Brian Goldner to claim during Hasbro’s Fourth Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call that Magic is “a storytelling brand first and foremost,” specifying that “engagement with characters is critical,” and it’s why Wizards announced soon thereafter that it would be doubling down on promoting the game’s story, using the Magic website and “story spotlight” cards to ensure that players can easily follow what’s happening with Jace, Liliana, Nicol Bolas, and all the rest.

As you and I know, these changes proved wildly successful: between 2009 and 2015, Magic acquired new players at a rapid clip, topping out at a reported 20 million. But as you and I also know, even though Magic financially recovered, the Magic Pros did not. Instead, in 2018, the Pro players’ condition is more precarious than ever, despite the fact that Magic is at or near the height of its popularity. Which is to say that Magic’s recent success has not, in fact, benefited the Pros. Rather, it has come at their expense.

The reason for this is relatively simple, although it might be difficult to see if one is too close to the game, and especially if one is too close to professional play. While Magic has grown tremendously over the past decade, the vast majority of the people playing today aren’t Pros, or even wannabe Pros. Instead, the past ten years have seen the “Invisibles”—casual, non-competitive players—take over. And while it’s true, as you said in your podcast, that people connect with other people, I fear you’re kidding yourselves if you think that most current Magic players are looking to connect with Magic Pros. Casual players and competitive gamers want fundamentally different things from Magic. Competitive Magic players want to test themselves, to participate in the highest levels of competition, where they strategically outplay the best opponents in the world. Like Kamahl, Pit Fighter, they came not to play, but to win, wanting the same thing Bob Maher wanted: “Greatness, at any cost.”

Casual players don’t want that, not at all. So while the Pro Tour remains, for professional players, the pinnacle of Magic, it’s a total bore for casual players (assuming they even know it exists). For one thing, as everyone knows, it makes a decidedly poor spectator sport: there’s tons of down time, and when players finally do sit down to battle, viewers can barely make out what’s happening, let alone read which cards are in play.

Beyond that, the game play itself is frequently anticlimactic, with a large percentage of games being won or lost due to mana issues. (Witness LSV losing the very last game of PT Guilds of Ravnica after mulling to four.)

It’s easy to forget, after learning something, what it was like not to know it, and competitive Magic players often forget how much knowledge is required in order to watch and enjoy the Pro Tour. Not only does one need to know all of the relevant cards and decks in a given format, but one has to understand top-level strategies, as well as issues like priority, triggers, and so on. Casual players don’t understand these things, and they don’t want to understand them. In March 2017, the Limited Resources podcast spent ninety minutes providing a detailed overview of Magic Online and “all of the phases and steps of Magic.” Casual players don’t want to listen to podcasts like that; nor do they want to learn how to set stops on Magic Online, or how to even start playing Magic Online.

Nor do they want to memorize draft pick orders, or feel like they have to know every combat trick in the format in order to play. They don’t want to have to do tons of homework just to play Magic. As such, these players (happily) lack the knowledge and proclivity required to appreciate the things that Pros obsess over, like in-depth analyses of strategy, or three-hour-long video series discussing the Top 100 Magic Cards of All Time, or even longer set reviews that scrutinize every card in a new set with an eye toward limited play. They don’t want to be Pros.

You can see this in the fact that casual players prefer playing different formats than the Pros do, to the point where the two groups are practically playing different games. Whereas Pros want to do Rochester drafts (with Beta packs!) and brew Standard decks and play Legacy and Vintage and Vintage cube, casual players gravitate toward formats like Commander. Pros famously dislike that multiplayer format due to the outsize role that politics play in determining who wins and who loses. But casual players are less invested in whether they win or lose, being more concerned with playing a fun, social game with people like themselves—people who express themselves not through crushing their opponents, but through the Guild identities, Commanders, Planeswalkers, and tribes. These players couldn’t care less about solving the metagame; since they lack the luxury of being sponsored by card shops, they can’t easily swap between decks, or afford to do dozens of drafts. Instead of playing with the best cards in the format, they play with the cards they happen to own, and if they do invest in a deck, it’s usually one that suits their personality, and that they can go on to play year in and year out, tinkering with over time.

Because these players are numerous, Wizards has spent the past decade shifting resources away from the Pro players and toward the larger, more casual demographic, rebranding Magic not as a cut-throat competitive game, but more as a fun play experience. Hence the onslaught of casual-friendly products such as Archenemy, Conspiracy, Commander decks, Unstable, the full-art promos for Ultimate Masters, and Magic Arena. The Magic brand no longer revolves around winning games of Magic; indeed, it no longer necessarily involves playing games of Magic. Since 2010, Magic Prereleases have routinely featured events like unlocking the Helvault (Scars of Mirrodin), picking a side in the Mirran-Phyrexian war (Mirrodin Besieged), choosing a clan (Khans of Tarkir), and puzzling one’s way out of the “Stitcher’s Lab” escape room (Shadows over Innistrad)—i.e., ways of getting players to engage with the Magic brand beyond building decks and playing matches. Rather than being cute side events, these types of activities are increasingly the central attraction. Two months ago, Wizards announced its intention to rebrand Grands Prix as “MagicFest,” or “weekends about so much more than just the main event,” including “side events, artist booths, cosplay, panels, [and] spellslinging.” (Pro Tours will be held at MagicFests.) Today’s Magic players are looking for more than just tournaments, which means that tournaments alone aren’t enough to sell and promote the Magic brand. (Wizards can no longer justify paying for standalone GPs and PTs.)

The shoe is now clearly on the other foot. Gradually, steadily, over the past ten years, the Pro players have traded places with the Invisibles, receding from view. At the Magic Subreddit, the top posts concern topics like Magic story, Magic art, card alters, and cosplay; rarely do they involve Magic tournaments. One week after your podcast came out, the “Grand Prix Montreal, Grand Prix Mexico City, and SCG Open Columbus Discussion Megathread!” pinned to the top of the Magic Subreddit received a whopping fifty-three up-votes, and forty-four comments. As it happened, more people were interested in the fact that the artwork for Expropriate features True-Name Nemesis. Small wonder then that the Mothership’s front page routinely ignores GPs and other organized play events, preferring to use that real estate to promote Guilds of Ravnica, Commander 2018, and Magic Arena.

Speaking of which: surely it won’t be long before Wizards moves the Pro Tour to Magic Arena, or replaces the Pro Tour outright with Arena-based tournaments. Already the company is paying celebrity gamers like Day9 and Trump to stream Arena—entertaining personalities who may not be the most skilled Magic players, but who are capable of drawing thousands of eyeballs.

Of course, it’s true that casual players admire certain Magic Pros, such as LSV. But casual players don’t like Luis Scott-Vargas just because he’s one of the greatest players of all time; they like him, and subscribe to the Divination, because LSV is funny and charismatic and loves to durdle and tease Paul Cheon. That’s why they tune in to his Twitch channel even when he does things like sign tokens for GP Las Vegas, choosing to vicariously hang out with him. LSV doesn’t make his casual fans feel stupid; he makes them feel smarter, and as though they’re winning and losing alongside him. In this regard, he’s unlike most Magic Pros, who typically come across to casual players as cold, unfeeling jerks who make Magic unfun by quickly defeating them, then berating them for making bad plays with bad cards and bad decks (or for picking foil Tarmogoyfs in draft).

That is why, in 2018, Pro players are no longer the public face of Magic, having been supplanted by the Planeswalkers. If 1996–2008 was the Pro Player Era, then 2008–present has been the Planeswalker Era. More Magic players today fantasize about being Kiora or Chandra than they do being Magic Pros, which is why Wizards has taken pains to diversify that lineup of characters. The casual player base has always been more diverse than the overwhelmingly male Pro scene, and it’s presumably growing more diverse by the day. (Note how many women and female characters Wizards has chosen to depict on the current Magic homepage.)

And the Planeswalkers offer benefits beyond that. Wizards doesn’t have to pay those characters anything, or fly them anywhere, or put up with them complaining about Magic, or doing things like sitting out Worlds in protest. (Sorry, GerryT.)

Mind you, none of this is to say that Wizards no longer cares about the Pros. I imagine the company is delighted to have such a dedicated group of players that spends all of its time promoting Magic for free by making Magic videos and podcasts—not to mention purchasing Magic cards. And no doubt Pros and Pro-wannabes are still responsible for a significant portion of the game’s revenue. But those players no longer appear to be Magic’s primary audience. As such, Wizards has spent the past decade adjusting its spending on those players to a more appropriate level, valuing them for what they’re really worth, as opposed to what Wizards thought they were worth c. 2006.

Since I don’t want to end this letter on too pessimistic a note, I’ll offer a few hopeful words of advice. Please keep in mind that I am not a Magic Pro. But if I were, I would try to take more of my well-being into my own hands. Fifteen years ago, when Wizards was ignoring the “Invisibles,” some of those players created Elder Dragon Highlander, which went on to become Commander, now the most popular Magic format (and which is still maintained by its own independent rules committee). Today, if the Pros feel slighted by Wizards, then they should make the version of Magic they want to exist—their own tournament scene, their own formats, their own banned and restricted lists, their own Hall of Fame—rather than relying on Wizards to maintain institutions it created in a totally different era, when the company’s priorities were different from what they are now. The Pros should also unionize, or enter into some other collective partnership, and make their stand together, collectively working to attract sponsors and streaming deals. More than anything else, the Pros should recognize that their fortunes won’t necessarily rise or fall with Wizards’, or with Magic’s. But the Pros will certainly rise and fall with each other.

70 Responses

Being a shop owner for more than a decade, I ve witness everything that you said. However the conclusion isnt centered with the biggest challenge of the game. All the parts involved in the business can and should get some revenue and WOTC seems no to care about this. The problem is that WOTC is relying on their franchises (we the shops) to make everything for them. Magic can continue without pros (I wish not) but not without shops. We sell the game and provide places to competitive and casuals. Their autistic way of doing things without comunicate with shops is really scary. There are now much more intereting games to sell, more predictable and with higher margins and MTG still doing great because shop owners love the game. But that won last forever. Thx anyway for the effort on the articule. The community of MTG should discuss more things like these.

Brilliant, this article actually left me optimistic about mtg. Comparing eSports to traditional sports, one of the weirdest components is how the IP and tournament organiser is the same entity (in eSports). Fundamentally pro’s support the secondary market (single sellers etc.), rather than the primary (Wizards/Hasbro), and one could make the case that separating the IP and the tournament organiser is how the competitive scene could evolve to be sustainable. I.e., it falls more to the SCG and CFB’s to maintain a pro circuit to sustain their secondary markets. Anyway, thanks for the article!

This article is overly optimistic. The pros are done. Once magic arena takes off, they will be cut for heartstone pros since those heartstone pros have bigger followings than any of the magic pros. LSV doesnt generate jack for followers while the lower tier of heartstone players are lightyears ahead in terms of twitch following. Its clear with arena that Magic will become heartstone 2.0 some day.

And honestly, its bullshit. Im not going to be like you and go “oh but theres some good to this!” since Magic’s future doesnt look good. Yes if your WoTC and your excited about making your CEO more money then all of this is great, but as players, the direction they are going in is terrible for the game. The culture is slowly eroding away and its going to be replaced with another angry half-assed online game that is loaded with microtransactions and more dweebs who will be loading WoTC’s pockets.

There’s a certain irony in somebody using the name “John Cena” who is an absolutely perfect example of what the article here is talking about, focusing on creating an experience for the consumer that they will take away from the actual medium and incorporate into their life, to claim that what WOTC is doing is bad and will be bad for the game.

The fact that you’ve created enough of a connection to the fictional character that the WWE created to sell the experience of identifying with core branded figures that you chose his name, even as a joke, demonstrates how effective this technique actually is.

The culture that is eroding is the culture of smug, aggressive, win-at-all-costs exclusive clique-creating men. The one replacing it is far better for the long-term health of the game and community. If you think making the game more accessible, with more representation, and more emphasis on creating emotional resonance is making it worse, you’re the one this letter was written -to- not -about-

Lol dude John Cena is an internet meme. I dont even watch wresting and never have. Me knowing who John Cena is doesnt mean Im connected to him. For christ sake hes the most popular wrestler in this generation, your just full of shit now lol.

And your even more full of shit to think that wotc really gives a shit about the culture of magic. The only culture they care about is making the CEO’s net worth go up. They are a big business. They could care less if you spent your entire bank account on ultimate masters and that your homeless from it. Im not sure what country your living in but here in the capitalistic united states, the only thing a company like WoTC cares about is money.

I…wow…okay. So what you’re saying is that the WWE has done such a good job marketing their branded characters that they’ve entered the popular culture to the extent that you’re referencing them without even consuming the content where those characters are present…but that’s an argument -against- my point? I just can’t even.

That was a wonderful history lesson and I appreciate the terrific amount of well documented information in this article. It really helped to give insight into the greater trayectory of Magic. However, there is one sticking point that I can’t reconcile all that well with the overarching story in this article, the rise of Hearthstone. That game managed to have it’s cake and eat it too while simultaneously stealing some of the most charismatic pros (Kibler and Reynad come to mind) from Magic. That game had both rich WoW lore and awesome starbuilding, it never went for an one or the other. I am sure that Hearthstone’s synergy with existing games was big help to it’s initial engagement but Magic has 25 years of lore and profound wellspring of nostalgia to draw from, essentially it has the first mover advantage. Hearthstone proved that there is a road that allows satistaction for everyone (at least until the game crashes from bad design choices, derp). Spikes, casuals, celebrities and pros can be juggled effectively; Blizzard, Riot and Valve have proven this and to be fair to Wizards, Magic has being crawling the right direction with Arena and play design. We -can- have an eSport scene that allows pros for sponsorships of companies associated with competitive computer gaming and Redbull (because those guys just like to sponsor shit). I agree that we can’t just have the pros rely 100% on Wizards but there is an effective middle ground to be found. Hopefully with this touted game-changing competitive Magic announcement we will continue down the right path. Don’t sleep on Twitch and Arena, it is the future of the game.

Regarding Hearthstone, being a player since it was in Beta, it is very interesting how they have simply refused to develop anything resembling a competitive tournament format. It has instead (sometimes very irksome) happened outside the client. Not unlike the suggested way forward in the last paragraph of this article.

As a player of Eternal formats (I love standard but when will a parent find time to keep up with meta?!), primarily Legacy, this article suggests that the community must put more efforts into curating the format and keeping it alive. I.e. more community organized tournaments, more podcasts, etc. The things invested long-time players of the game wants. The greatest challenge of course being the growth of the Eternal player base being the cost of cards, but lets not dive in to a Reserved List discussion here.

While this is a fantastic article, we are all missing some information to make clear deductions. For one thing, how much does the competitive and pro scene contribute to Wizard’s revenue? I absolutely agree that casuals should not be underestimated, and the success of a number of products – like the Commander precons – clearly indicates this. But Wizards does not sell millions of boxes of their latest set to these people.

If Standard is the lead earner, and I believe it still is, then the competitive scene is still the main earner as well. Nothing will sell booster boxes like a large population all needing the same mythic rares to compete. Wizards relationship with kitchen table players has always been a dual one: on one hand, they are happy to have all these players buy SOME of their products; but on the other, the point has always been to bring them closer to the competitive scene, even if it’s only the FNM one. And a number of products targeted at casual players have been with that goal in mind. I do get your point about those casuals who will never be interested in anything competitive, but these are also the players who will never buy much beyond the occasional – discontinued – duel decks or other precons.

What I do see, on the other hand, is a very active attempt at acquiring new players through a large number of products specifically aimed at newcomers, in a variety of forms to ensure as wide a net as possible. That, however, is not indicative that the company is willing to see these players remain at that level of play: a game night box is but a starting point.

In that context, I still don’t understand Wizards lack of investment in their pros, especially considering how cheap it is comparing to the visibility it brings. I do note however that a number of their entry-level products have been big failures, whether it’s the boardgames, the aforementioned game night boxes, and so on. They must still have costed a large amount of ressources to produce, and might very well be seen internally as promotional material aimed at attracting a new public, and thus in competition with promotional material aimed at pulling the public towards the higher end competitive side of the game.

While you’re right we don’t have the hard data here (or anywhere since WotC shares very little actual data), based on some things Rosewater and others have said I’m not sure you’re correct about why booster box products move off the shelves. Pros may have a *disproportionate* influence on how many sell compared to their percentage of the overall playerbase, but I suspect the vast majority of booster box product moves due to those on the kitchen table end of the spectrum or at least those somewhere in the middle. You link FNM play to the Pro side of the equation but I think it’s fair to say while people who go to FNMs are interested in organized/ competitive play at a local level most are not oriented towards top-tier/Pro play – they’re more on the “have fun (with friends)” end of the spectrum. That’s why FNM and most other local organized play is under Regular REL, not Competitive/Professional REL. They don’t play more or less based on what the Pros are doing or saying, they play based on how “fun” they think the current format is and/or what their friends are investing their time in. Pros may influence what they play but not how much they play. The vast majority of booster box sales are casuals buying boosters/boxes and ripping them to see what they get, buying them for drafts/sealed (casual and tournaments), and buying singles for FNM/Regular REL-level constructed tournament play.

It would be so great to see the numbers! But I think that, in their absence, we can still make some guesses about who’s buying Magic packs.

I think you’re right that casual players are buying a fair number of booster packs, which is why Wizards does things like sell single packs at Target. (Pros presumably aren’t buying those packs.)

In addition to that, Wizards has increasingly made its sets Commander-friendly (see Dominaria, for instance), which implies that the company is trying to ensure that Commander players find something cool to play with when they buy and crack packs. To put it another way, Wizards isn’t just selling those players specialized products like Commander 2018; they want them to buy and crack booster packs. So the challenge for Wizards over the past few years has been to make sets that appeal to both Pro players (for booster draft, sealed, and Standard) and casual players (who are looking for cool cards and stuff to add to their Commander decks). The more Commander-friendly the sets are, presumably, the more the casual players are buying packs (or the more Wizards is tempting them to buy packs).

I can perhaps provide a little insight into those numbers. I was an LGS owner for 4 years, and among other things, information given to me by WOTC at store-owner-level-only events put the amount of magic players who -never- play sanctioned magic at all (not even FNM or a Pre-release) at 95% about 4 years ago. Almost everything WOTC pitched to us in that capacity was aimed at “Converting kitchen table players to LGS players by any means necessary” which I think supports the point of the article with regards to WOTC’s focus.

Additionally, my first-hand experience is that the vast majority of sealed product was sold to casual players. I’d say probably 70% of all booster packs and boxes I sold were to players who never took part in any sanctioned event, maybe 20% to players who played only in pre-releases, FNM or other “more casual” sanctioned play, and then the last 10% to who I’d actually call enfranchised players.

One of the really complicated things I had to contend with and try and get my community to contend with is the knowledge that, just by virtue of being deep enough into Magic to be playing in stores, posting on Twitter, and watching on Twitch and responding to these articles, while we are basically the only portion of the community we really hear from, we are both a tiny minority of the community, and actually about the least sources of primary market sales.

This will be kinda difficult to ultimately suss out, because the truly competitive don’t buy boxes or cases; they buy singles, from dealers or borrow amongst each other or sponsors. Dealers, and wanna-be-dealers, buy by the case and crack the packs for singles, which are sold to casual and pro alike.

As to “visibility,” I cannot name one person in twelve years as a store and twenty-one years as a player who came to the game because of the Pros. Same for people sticking with the game. I know more people who invested heavier on the say-so of a pro (while simultaneously becoming much more aggressive about price), but they also tend to burn out faster and become non-customers faster than a casual who plays periodically without a burn out period.
I know LOTS of people who picked up a sport as a casual viewing event thanks to the star power of celebrity players like Michael Jordan, Troy Aikman,etc. (Yes, 80s & 90s, but it was something to see nerdy peers take up ball-game watching)

Quick anecdotal, pros/more competitive players generally don’t crack packs unless they win them or are drafting them. It’s the people on the more casual end of the spectrum that buy boxes and packs. At least that’s my experience having worked at a shop and having played for 25 years.

I think Wizards is starting to understand driving these people toward the competitive scene is a bug not a feature. These people are there to have fun and tournament grinding kills your love of the game faster than anything.

Casual, lower stakes and inviting atmosphere (think FNM) is where Wizards would probably like to keep things for the most part these days, but with the history tournament Magic has their goals and shops aren’t in sync.

If I were a shop owner these days and could make it work, I think coffee shop/cafe and casual gaming is how you’d make your money. Tournaments honestly often lose money because entry fees and prizes are a super delicate balance when you need to keep the lights on.

Well, with all the comments to my post, I stand corrected. I really did not see things this way. I never became a competitor myself, and my main partner is my wife, who is a duel deck-level player herself. My paper – non-MTGO – purchases have all been on the casual side. Nevertheless, I have followed the pros ever since I started playing, pretty much since Magic came out. I guess I saw the Magic world through a different set of eyes than the vast majority.

That’s really short sighted way to see it. I bet you every player who’s been playing at shops for half as long as you out spends any casual player by a wide margin. Casuals cracking some packs might look good on the quarterly report, but you really shouldn’t ignore the customer base that’s been around for decades by now. Instead of trying to constantly fish for new players with various gimmicks, they should concentrate on making a better game for the existing player base that brings in the $ long term.

You pose it like fun and tournaments are the two opposites. But tournaments are the fun for some people, for others not. We need both casual and competitive in the same way different formats cater different kind of people. One size doesn’t fit all.

Wizards really seems to like fucking with it’s base. Support for shops too has dropped, I really don’t understand why. They are the ones that sell their product…

When you constantly have people around the shop, they will buy whatever. Tournaments on their own are really a 0 deal, it’s everything that comes with them that sells. Singles, sleeves, packs, boxes, binders, you name it. A shop that doesn’t host tournaments won’t have the kinda traffic and it’ll show in the numbers.

As someone who used to live in Roanoke, VA (the home of Star City Games), this all rings so, so true. A lot of higher level players are not only entitled, but they are also incredibly toxic. They have inflated senses of ego and it is honestly nice to see them put in their place. I try not to be a vendictive person, but it is really irritating when you have multiple pros and grinders trying to spike the hell out of your pre-releases. Also, having to deal with their egos pretty much any time you go into the shop is tiresome and irksome.

There are some of them that also rely on Magic as their sole source of income. I often tried to tell them that they need to develop some actual marketable skills, because their personality wasn’t cutting it and they are up a creek if the game ever goes under. I could name a few names in particular, but I won’t.

I blame WoTC more for promoting the lifestyle. Obviously pro Magic cant really be done since the money is abysmal and WoTC doesnt care. They dont care if Reid Duke or LSV is homeless, as long as they are flickering mythic rares on camera for twitch, thats all that matters to them.

I bordered on the outskirts of high level Magic, both on MTGO and tabletop, and I have a comment to make here: The way the game or the tournaments are designed creates an environment where that kind of toxic personalities flourish. Though I played against very great people over the years, I still have unpleasant memories especially from people who deliberately manipulated in game situations to their advantage, rather than straight and fair play. From all sorts of cheating (opponent who won the States championship, who used his Waterveil Caverns as an Underground Sea multiple times and got away with it with just a warning etc) as if it is to trash talking to mind tricks. (There are many Mike Longs on lower level competitions, that is the only name I know, I am sure there is more.)

If you are a player who wants to also compete but refuse to be a douchebag, it does not take long to be put off competitive magi because of this.

I don’t blame the game or tournament design – when you’re making an event that attracts the most competitive, most entrenched members of a…generally not socially adept subculture, it’s going to be toxic. The only alternative is to make it incredibly rule-bound, and that’s going to put off potential newcomers as well.

I think this is one of the unspoken reasons Arena may take off – the limited communication means that people aren’t given the opportunity to be jerks. Combined with the fact that Arena limits asinine mind-games and possible card manipulation, I think Wizards-backed paper Magic is on life support.

Thank you for your insightful article. I started in Magic in the Pro Era and aspired that prestige for a short while. When I came back to Magic a few years ago I could tell something major had changed and it wasn’t just that I was now a fully casual player. You put that change into words.

ye if the competitive standard player leaves MTG for another game.like most ppl r leaving LOL for FORTNITE .
standard investment is what makes them big dolars and paper cards is what keeps ppl invested in the game.i for one been loving arena since i can have 3/4 of the best standard decks without spending a penny and get my fix of magic for free

I have a personal pet peeve with the shortened “Pro” being used in such a lengthy article…Either it means “professional” or “promotional”. It seems to be used to describe one and/or both positions simultaneously…

From Wizards’ perspective, there’s no distinction between the professional players and Magic’s promotional needs. Wizards created the Pro Tour and professional Magic in order to market the game, end of story. (Skaff Elias was the game’s first Brand Manager.) Wizards pursued that brand vision for twelve years, until 2008. When it failed, the company started pursuing a different brand vision, which is why Wizards has spent the past ten years paying the Pros less.

That’s just business. Meanwhile, I’m sure the Pros have a different view of things. I imagine that they envision professional Magic as being other than merely promoting the game—that decisions about Magic’s rules and tournaments should be driven by something other than what Wizards’ marketing department needs in any given quarter. But if that’s true, then that’s another reason why the Pros would be wise to take more control over their own fate.

(To use a specific example, Wizards is always going to ban a key Modern card before each Modern PT, in order to shake up the format, and sell more packs from the most recent set. If the Pros think it’s wrong to do that, then they need to create their own formats with their own B&R lists.)

If 100% of the “pro magic player” base stopped playing GPs, Pro Tours, etc and all moved over to Star City Games, would WOTC even care?
Would WOTC even blink one eye at cancelling the Pro Tour as we know it?
Would SCG start to pay appearance fees akin to “Silver/Gold Level” pros?
Would SCG reluctantly provide some kind of payment if these “pros” then unionized?

Hey Adam! I just want to thank you for putting the time and effort into this article with serious research and backing going on with reference links. This was extremely enjoyable to read and put things in perspective for me. I am a magic player who watches all content I can and rarely misses a pro tour, and if I do, you can sure as hell know I’ll be online later that night looking at deck lists. Either way, I hope somehow there can be a medium between wizards and the pros because I clearly enjoy the both! Keep it up man!

I work as a marketing manager for a game developer and I can speak to what is happening. We are moving into the digital space. Pros are being replaced by entertainers… people who stream, or who have large followings or are in themselves entertaining to watch and may or may not be pro level but are just good enough. It is far easier and more cost effective with higher rates of return to market a game to a large audience via people who are likable and able to maintain an audience’s attention. Pro players don’t sell at all as much as what we call “influencers” do… pros maybe valuable to the community in regards to developing the meta for established players… but does nothing for bringing new players to the game and selling sealed product. There is a misplaced emphasis on pros being heads of the magic community… their not… they are simply a result of the community.

Thoughtful, insightful article. I do have one quibble, though. The NBA promotes star players to attract viewers. People tune in to see spectacular players for entertainment, not for the inspiration to become professional players, as most fans are not 6’6” or taller with the athletic ability to even dream of being a pro. The NBA gets revenue from viewers and sales of licensed merchandise, not from people buying basketballs and shoes and hitting the courts.

Wizards is probably making the right call, releasing products to bring in more players, selling more through Walmart and Amazon, and being inviting to casual players. I think they just need to solve one more piece of the equation: helping their network of LGS make a better living from casual players.

Good point, and I agree with you! You figure that’s probably one reason why the Pro Player Era failed. Not enough people wanted to become Magic pros. (And why would they? It never paid all that well, and required flying all over the world.) Anyway, these days it seems clear that Wizards wants to pay entertaining celebrity players to stream Magic Arena. (There’s a good comment elsewhere in this comment section about how, these days, companies want “influencers” more than they want competitive players.)

re: the LGS issue, I haven’t studied it, but my impression is that Wizards cares less and less about local game stores these days, presumably because they’re acquiring fewer and fewer players that way.

Good point about the LGSs. I’d love to play Magic in stores, but the environment is crap. The stores are the hub of the kind of play environment that WOTC is trying to move away from. Cliquish, Spikey, win-before-fun, overwhelmingly male-dominated, etc. Stores seem uninterested in creating a casual play environment that’s actually fun. I don’t blame new players for not wanting to play in stores. It’s dreadful. What’s worse is that a store that can run a really inclusive D&D or board game night still runs a barrier-filled, off-putting FNM.

At least, that’s my experience with it. Right now, stores are a barrier to where WOTC wants to take Magic, not a vehicle.

Basketball, or soccer etc is enjoyable to watch for most people and can be done at several levels, you don’t need to be a top tactician to enjoy a match…magic isn’t, unless you are deep into it, as pointed in the article, huge difference

This describes me and my friends perfectly. I play competitively attempt to, anyways) at a couple LGS’s. But every Saturday night I’m playing casual games like star or emperor with friends that I grew up with. That group has been playing since BETA. So thanks for the article.

As a female who has played since around the Fallen Empires era too, thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and appreciate the extensive links! This game is about so much more than the tournament grind. Magic has great art, amazing stories, a Planewalker I named a local game store business in reference to (Mind Sculpt Games), and an amazing diversity of ways to play and cards to play with. The first thing I did with Magic was to try to build a set of fourth edition with my dad. I really love foil Legendary cards. Building a draft cube of commons and uncommons was lots of fun. I have a collection of almost every preconstructed deck from Stronghold to Shards of Alara. I’ve played Archenemy and Planechase and Elder Dragon Highlander and Commander and all have been fun. I won $100 at a competitive tournament once. That car ride home I was mad at myself the whole time for not making the play to win myself more. I played in the top 8 of a PTQ and thought about how much it would cost me to actually make the Pro Tour. I didn’t want to go. I finished in the top 50 at a Star City Open and thought how long it was to make my legs go numb from sitting. Magic has great story, and it’s evolution is part of my evolution. I’ve been playing Magic for 24 years. This article may be one of the most insightful I’ve ever read about Magic and the diversity of the player base and the play experience that maybe has the best chance at satisfaction and gratification for the most. And on a personal note – thanks for putting women in the writing about Magic and in the images. Appreciated!

This is a fantastic article about the future of the game and where it comes from. The “cater to the pro” mentality is dreadful, and ignores the vast majority of the player base. If the idea of “pro Magic” died, I think the game would be healthier and better. Thank you for this post.

[…] The information of participant contracts might have a major affect. Magic professional Gerry Thompson sat out the world championships in protest for the way he views Wizards of the Coast isn’t correctly supporting the Professional Tour and its gamers. Some followers are frightened concerning the state of professional Magic. […]

[…] The information of participant contracts may have a big impression. Magic professional Gerry Thompson sat out the world championships in protest for the way he views Wizards of the Coast isn’t correctly supporting the Professional Tour and its gamers. Some fans are worried about the state of pro Magic. […]

[…] The news of player contracts could have a significant impact. Magic pro Gerry Thompson sat out the world championships in protest for how he views Wizards of the Coast isn’t properly supporting the Pro Tour and its players. Some fans are worried about the state of pro Magic. […]

[…] The news of player contracts could have a significant impact. Magic pro Gerry Thompson sat out the world championships in protest for how he views Wizards of the Coast isn’t properly supporting the Pro Tour and its players. Some fans are worried about the state of pro Magic. […]

[…] and discuss the community’s response to his protest. Just three days ago, there was ‘An open letter to Cedric Phillips, Gerry Thompson, and the Pro Magic community at large‘ which posited why the author thinks Wizards of the Coast don’t, won’t, and […]

[…] The news of player contracts could have a significant impact. Magic pro Gerry Thompson sat out the world championships in protest for how he views Wizards of the Coast isn’t properly supporting the Pro Tour and its players. Some fans are worried about the state of pro Magic. […]

[…] The news of player contracts could have a significant impact. Magic pro Gerry Thompson sat out the world championships in protest for how he views Wizards of the Coast isn’t properly supporting the Pro Tour and its players. Some fans are worried about the state of pro Magic. […]

I just need to ask 1 question, how about all the LGS, does WOTC even realize that they exist ? While the Pros are protesting about their diminishing support, the LGS lost GPTs, PPTQs, Store Champ recently, and now Nationals too. I have regulars asking me, whats the point of grinding points and skills at FNMs and SSDs now if the next major competitive event such as MagicFest requires traveling overseas, after spending on boxes and singles, now the only way for them to play in a major event is to travel overseas? Nicely done there, now tell me why i should continue on playing the paper format or ordering the next set from my LGS if FNM and SSD are the only thing in the menu, would be perfectly fine if i have a sack full of cash lying around in the corner of my room waiting to be spent on airplane tickets and hotels for MagicFest. It looks like the future of MTG is to play Arena and watch the LGSs die slowly; thanks for selling our products guys, we’re going esports now, wont be supporting you much anymore but please build up the community for us !!

My impression is that the future of competitive Magic is Arena, while the future of Commander and fun social Magic is in-person and played with paper cards. I could be wrong about that, of course, but that’s my impression. If I’m right, though, then the future of LGS’s and in-person events like GPs will be more like MagicFests: big, fun conventions that welcome everyone, especially casual players who want lots of ways to interact with the Magic brand beyond just playing.

The layoffs (not firings, technically speaking) across 2008 of Wizards staff (roughly 26% of the company) had little to do with Magic and its state, and much much more to do with the unfolding Great Recession and the difficulties inherent in creating, releasing and operating software.

This is one of the best articles I have ever read about any subject. I mean the way you construct your argument and communicate it in a clear and undestandable way. Hats off!

I personaly got more and more disullusioned with MTG since circa 2008 (as I am one of the pure spikes who always enjoyed the competition aspect of the game) and your article finally explained to me why it was like that.

I’m a Spike myself, and I know what you mean. In my case, I went from playing Magic to studying and writing about Magic (and geek culture at large). I also channeled a lot of my Spikeyness into getting my PhD. Speaking of which, that’s where I learned how to write—so my teachers deserve the credit for that! (And thank you for the compliment!)

i think i’ve read this article about 3 times already and have been sharing it to my friends. and i’ve been getting all the same reaction. they loved this in-depth historical analysis of Magic and its direction. we also feel that this is spot on. hope you write more articles.

Thank you! As it happens, a lot of this information comes from a book that a friend and I started writing about Magic a while back. We ever finished it, but maybe we will, someday! And I have lots of other information, and am thinking about writing more articles.

Your essay was great, but any reaction to the $10 million dollar competitive announcement that sort of flies in the face of the main thread of your thesis? Not blaming your logic at all, but it seems WOTC did an about face in zero to sixty while still maintaining the other points you described.

Yeah, I’m working on a reply. My basic takeaway though is that the tabletop market must be all tapped out, or even contracting, which means that Wizards has to pivot into digital gaming, because that’s where all the growth is. I’m guessing that the company has been gradually realizing this since 2015.

I could certainly be wrong. But my basic thought is that Wizards’ scramble to develop Arena over the past few years, plus the recent upheavals to Organized Play, means Wizards thinks there’s more potential growth right now in digital gaming / eSports than there is in tabletop gaming.

Other observations: It would seem that Magic’s growth slowed or stalled c. 2015? And Wizards seems to be getting out of the business of running tabletop tournaments, by licensing that to vendors like ChannelFireball (who are reliant on physical Magic cards in a way that Wizards might no longer want to be).